TV

Eva Braun was Adolf Hitler's secret mistress for more than 13 years. To this day she is viewed as a naïve, apolitical appendage to the dictator and mass murderer.

She only became publicly known after her death in 1945, when she and Hitler committed suicide in a bunker in Berlin.

Eva Braun met Hitler in 1929 and became his lover when she was just 17 years old. During the years of their relationship, she evolved from an average middle class girl to the uncompromising partner of the mass murderer. She remained true to Hitler until death. On 30 April 1945 Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide in the bunker beneath the Reich Chancellery in Berlin. A day earlier, the dictator had married her.

But who was this 'bride of evil' really? Hitler's architect Albert Speer referred to her after the war as one of the "disappointments of history". Kept out of the public eye, she spent most of her time in Munich or at Hitler's Berghof residence in the Alps. There she lived officially as the dictator's private secretary. Historian Heike Görtemaker has tracked down and assembled the puzzle pieces of Eva Braun's life in a groundbreaking biography. Behind the assumed gaiety, the author finds a resolute woman who pursued her goals with tremendous toughness right up to her death.

For this documentary, filmmaker Michael Kloft conducted detailed interviews with Görtemaker and evaluated the many private films made by Eva Braun as well as the countless photo albums she compiled. This two-part documentary calls into question the image of the vapid young woman at the Führer's side.